Obama’s Middle East policies failed and he should butt out
Washington Examiner
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Former President Barack Obama’s first statement on the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas was short and to the point.
“We grieve for those who died, pray for the safe return of those who’ve been held hostage, and stand squarely alongside our ally, Israel, as it dismantles Hamas,” Obama wrote.
NOT ONE CENT FOR BIDEN’S FAILED BORDER STRATEGY
If only he had left it there — getting its priorities right concisely and precisely.
But leaving things alone is not Obama’s way. Two weeks later, he returned to meddle in U.S. and Israeli policy with a much longer statement, reminding everyone why his Middle East was such a disaster.
He downgraded his support for dismantling Hamas to “going after Hamas” and “dismantling its military capabilities.” There’s a big difference. Apparently, Obama actually wants to preserve Hamas’s government in Gaza. (A measure of Hamas’s standard of government is that it steals resources from its own people and the United Nations to prosecute the war.)
Two paragraphs into his statement, after checking the box of Israel having a “right to defend its citizens,” Obama introduced his disgraceful “but.” It was a “but” anyone who has watched the former president over the years knew would come. In fact, all one needed to know it was coming is to have seen the photo of him with his pal Louis Farrakhan, the racist bigot leader of the Nation of Islam. “But,” said Obama, “even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecuted this fight against Hamas matters.”
Of course it does. Israel prosecutes all the fights imposed on it by its hostile neighbors with scrupulous care to avoid civilian casualties. So why bother saying it?
The purpose of Obama’s latest missive is to undercut Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas. The former president said Americans must acknowledge “that Palestinians have also lived in disputed territories for generations; that many of them were not only displaced when Israel was formed but continue to be forcibly displaced by a settler movement that too often has received tacit or explicit support from the Israeli government.”
This echoes the Hamas explanation for why it is justifiable to kill fathers, behead babies, and rape women. “We have to redefine what it means to be a civilian,” a Hamas spokesman told Sky News, explaining that he did not consider any settler a civilian.
There is a lot of necessary talk about the importance of norms in a democratic society. One of our republic’s established norms is that ex-presidents leave Washington, D.C., and mostly stay silent about what their successors are doing, especially on foreign policy.
Obama mostly did so when former President Donald Trump was in office, even as Trump leads the league in violating norms. But Obama clearly feels entitled to comment now that President Joe Biden is in office. This is especially troubling because of their established relationship. Biden was Obama’s deputy for eight years, and this has stamped Obama indelibly as the senior partner who tells his sidekick what to do. It has long been suspected that Obama, from his house in Washington’s Kalorama district, pulls strings in the Biden White House. And now here he is, interfering and apparently trying to steer the course that he thinks the federal government should take on one of the biggest policy and strategic issues in years.
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He does this because he is still the arrogant, overweeningly self-admiring man he always was, but also because he thinks he can get away with it because most voters see Biden as not up for the job and in need of competent help. Biden’s weakness invites Obama to speak up, but he should decline the invitation. But Obama’s record shows plainly that he should have no sway over Middle Eastern policy and the security of Israel.
The massacre of civilians by Iran’s client organization Hamas has exposed the folly of Obama’s decision to empower it. The Middle East is now a far more dangerous place thanks to the billions of dollars that Obama and now Biden have given Iran, funding terrorism throughout the region. It would be best for everyone if Obama thought more about why his Iran strategy failed and wrote less about how Israel should protect itself.